Goosies and salty tears

My heart has a way of recognising truth long before my mind catches up. When truth hits home inside of me, two things happen – I get goosebumps all down my arms and I find myself blubbing like a baby. Without fail. Every time.

As a writer, I get excited when I go goosies. Simply because I know that what moves me – will touch my readers. Maybe not all of them, but thats okay. Us creative types are ‘moved, to move’. Rory Noland describes this dynamic beautifully in his book The Heart of the Artist. To paraphrase… when you watch a movie, hear music or see a painting that makes you want to weep – its because the artist felt deeply about what he was creating.

I felt this when I read Jim Zee’s post Two Heartbeats Wanted – Apply Within. I caught a glimpse of the heart of the man – the things that matter to him and reading it moved me.

I heard a song yesterday that had me undone for most of the day. Why? Because Matt caught the heart of the Father and sang it over me. Over you. Over a broken, hurting world. I’ll leave you with the song…

Wet, muddy – but alive

The last week has been my ‘work deadline’ week in which I produce a monthly  mini-magazine for our church. It involves some writing, a good bit of editing, some photography, some arm-twisting (to get others to write for me), a whole lot of design and layout and seriously little sleep. Did I mention that I don’t get to sleep much? The entire process has a way of reducing my brain to a pile of mush that quivers if you look at it too hard.

The good news is that I delivered it safely to the printers on Wed, and I’m slowly catching up on my home & my family. I feel like I’ve been trawling the bottom of the ocean in deep dark isolation. At last! I’m being let up to see the sun and breathe air again! I’m still soggy and muddy and in serious need of some catch-up-zzzz’s… but I’m up.

The best part of all this is… I get to visit with you lovely lot again! I’ve spent some time each morning skimming through the latest posts while my brain slowly surfaces  over a cup of tea. I don’t want to feel completely cut off. But rounding up enough coherent braincells to produce a vaguely meaningful post? Not a chance.

On a different tack, I do want to take a moment to crack open a bottle of the best cyber-champagne to celebrate some wonderful news. My lovely friend Kerri Maniscalco has landed herself an agent! How nice is that! You should go see what she’s up to, so much fun.

Well folks, the low battery light is blinking furiously in my head and I should probably quit while I’m ahead before I start to dribble drivel through my sleepy fingers.

It has been so nice to see you again!

I love reading GIVEAWAY!

Reblogged from commutinggirl:

Yay! Giveaway!

Nope I don’t have 100 followers (yet). It may seem like I do but really the number on the right includes my Twitter followers on top of my blog friends…

Since I did not want to wait any longer, I decided to do an “I love reading GIVEAWAY”.

I love reading. I love books. I really do. It’s a love affair which has been going on for the longest time.

Read more… 209 more words

The lovely Commutinggirl is holding an I love reading giveaway. :) Join the fun!

The one that got away

I had a plan for today. I really did. It was rather good too.

It involved getting kidlets off to school, then a solid hour writing stint on my project 2, some choreography for dance group tonight and quietly wrapping my brain around cutting our music for the dance we’re working on. After that was off to work, mom’s taxi in the afternoon, home to make supper then dancing.

And then small kidlet woke up sick.

My morning was spent sorting brekkies that she didn’t want to eat, finding Ariel…no no no! Peter Pan. No Mom, the other Peter Pan… packing food for her visit to Grampa (which she didn’t eat anyway), packing toys for her visit to Grampa… catching the ball she was throwing at me – and trying not to drop my laptop in the process. I gave up, dropped her off and went to work.

And now? My kidlets are sleeping and my dishwasher is quietly humming in the background. Finally some writing time? Um. That would be no. Draped over my couch, I have my 13yo’s school gym glaring at me. The offending gym is too long. So instead of writing tonight, I’ll be hemming a school dress.

Today got away from me. In every way imaginable. 

But its okay. I get to try again tomorrow. 

Speaking of tomorrow, I’d better get on with that hem…

Hoping you kept your hands on your goldfish today. X

Your winter is over

Today’s post is a little unusual, so bear with me. If you get to a point that you feel it’s not for you, you are most welcome to go make some tea and carry on with your life, or move on to the next blog. I won’t be offended in the slightest. Promise.

In the December holidays, I decided to move our Allamanda from one side of the garden to the other. We’ll be building a garage sometime and that bed will be abandoned. (You can read the tragic saga of our ensuite garage here.) I love my Allamanda with its bright happy trumpets, I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up on it. We planted it way back when we first moved in, so it’s pretty much part of the family. You know, that part that lives in the garden and doesn’t come in for meals. Surely every family has one? Many years of happy growth means it was broadly spread on top and underneath the soil. I needed to move this rather large plant by myself, and the only way to do it, was to chop back the top and the roots quite harshly.  

I know what all the books say about transplanting – take all the roots with, dig a square 1m x1m and so on. I’m a girl. I can only do so much and, in faith, I did. For weeks, seven to be precise – not that I’m counting - there was every indication that I had committed vicious planticide. The severely hacked branches looked good for only one thing – firewood. BUT! At the beginning of this week, I went over to have a look… and it was sprouting! Vibrant green life peeping through the seemingly dead wood. I won’t lie. I nearly hugged my little plant.

Why am I telling you this? You see, that first day when I started hacking my plant in preparation for the move, I felt God whisper to me that this action was significant. I’m learning to listen when He whispers, He often says the most important things in a whisper. This is what I believe He was saying…

You may feel as if your life has been severely chopped back. Things have been stripped away from you, top and bottom. You’ve been in a place of fruitlessness with no sign of any life or progress.

That season is over. You have been moved to a different place – not one doomed for destruction and abandonment, but a place of growth and fruitfulness. A place of LIFE. For a time there was no visible evidence of His working inside of you, in your life – but now its bursting through the seams in glorious technicolour!

No more dry, dead bark.

Now green shoots and bright flowers.

Welcome to Spring!

ABC Award

You really should head on over here to meet the lovely lady that sent this my way. In reality, we’ve only just met here in blogland, but it feels like she’s a friend I’ve known forever. She is encouraging, inspiring and has a tranquility about her that breathes through every beautiful word she writes. I’m looking forward to many years of rubbing virtual shoulders and sharing cups of cyber-tea with you Jeannie.

I am passing this award on to the lovely ladies of #ClubAwesome…  this is a rather neat way of getting to know a few random factlets about new friends…

Aryn

Kerri Maniscalco

Stephanie Knipper

Jennifer M Eaton

Kip Wilson Rechea 

The ABC instructions are:
Add the logo to your site.
Pass the ABC award on to other bloggers.
Use the alphabet to make a list of words describing you so readers will learn more about you.

Okay, this part is a leeetle bit daunting…

Armchair adventurer… which is why I write.

Believing

Contradictory… half of me is incredibly organised and the other half is incredibly NOT. (According to this book, I’m not crazy) 

Dreamer

Enthusiastic

Far too emotional

Grace only by grace…

Hurried life is BUSY

Imbalanced  Oh yeah…

Joker according to my kidlets, no idea what makes them think that

Kids 3 girls, 13, 11 & 4-going-on-16

Love my life.

Multi-tasking permanently!

Never-ever-ever-give-up

Objective about most things in life, not all though and not all the time.

Persistent

Query query query… rest… repeat. My writer buds are nodding.

Running < one exercise I hate with a passion.

Strange but not a stranger

Tired - often.

Upheld by so many of you who are reading this.

Visionary

Waterbaby love swimming

X X! Are you kidding me? Um…. XOXO there you go!

Yielded

Zany What a daft word, but it kinda fits.

PHEW! That was fun.

“Wax on, Wax off” and Other Words of Wisdom from the Silver Screen

Reblogged from jessseeker:

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Along with my house keys, odd socks and random bits of fluff – I often find wisdom in the most unlikely of places:

“WAX ON, WAX OFF”. Karate Kid  

Mister Miyagi coupled housework with martial arts training. He also caught flies with chopsticks.  Someone give him a medal. 

“IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE, DON’T SAY NOTHIN’ AT ALL”. Bambi…

Read more… 237 more words, 1 more video

Stop the drama and pass the spinach please

After all the drama of the weekend, I’m super-happy to post some down-to-earth, regular-but-exciting writing news. That last bit sorta rhymes… hmmm. Relax, I’m not about to sprout poetry at you, but I do want to share some progress.

It is time for an update for those of you who cheered me on as I announced my intention to grow up and stop being such a baby (you can read about that here if you missed it). I am 98% done with project number 1! Waiting for review notes to come back, then one quick round of edits and it is FINISHED.

Project number two… is a e-book for ICDF on starting and running a dance group. This is a side of me that you don’t really get to see here on Doodles, but if you are interested, you can have a peep at my group here. Dancing is a passion of mine that has quietly burned throughout the years and has simply never left. It is good for my body, soul and spirit.

Back to the booklet – I have done a comprehensive content & chapter breakdown and am working my way through writing it, one section at a time. At the moment it still feels like wading through a giant plate of spaghetti, but I know it will become more ordered as I write. I think the key with this one is to just keep writing and sort it all out afterwards.

Aaah! and of course… constantly lurking on the fringes of my mind, like a dancer patiently waiting for her turn in the spotlight – book number 2. 

Wow. Who knew that being a grown up and sticking to ones own rules… would be so hard?  

 

 

 

Don’t throw rocks into valleys

Today was one of those icky days that I’d rather not repeat. Ever.

I lost my kid. Mercifully, I got her back – but this is what happened. 

My 13yo (you can see her hands in the pic above) was keen to do the Surfers Challenge with two of her friends. Unlike the name suggests, it’s a 17km race along the coast of East London, South Africa. It’s a popular event that sees thousands of runners & walkers pit their strength & resolve against paddlers who race alongside through the waves. It has squat to do with surfing.

It’s a stiff walk, but quite manageable. So far so good.

I’d planned to wait for her on the beach at Gonubie – approximately half way, to make sure she was coping. At the same time, my other half is training for a mountain bike race, 360 degrees and had been out since early. As I was about to leave – to check on the kid - he phones to say he’d taken a wrong turn and had ended up too far away to cycle home (he’d already clocked 90-odd km’s) and please could I fetch him. Hmmm. Kid remained unchecked.

I got him home in time to head to the finish line at Nahoon Beach (CRAZY traffic, picture rush hour x10). I checked with the finish line – her friends had come in half an hour ago but she hadn’t. A few phone calls later, I’m told that she quit the race in Gonubie. Where I was supposed to meet her… At this point I felt like dying. I phoned my hubby to go look for her and started back through the hideous traffic to find my car and get to Gonubie, praying for all I’m worth.  

For a good hour (read eternity), I had no idea where my kid was. Was she distraught? Injured? Stolen? A lifetime of cursing at the non-budging q of cars, I got a message from a friend to say my daughter had just crossed the finish line.

I blubbed. One of the worst parts of having a writers brain is the myriad of worst-case scenarios that your brain dishes up when something turns sour. A few miscommunications was all it took to haul my insides out and have a herd of fat elephants river-dance on them. She’d wanted to quit at Gonubie and a friend of mine had advised her to ask one of the officials to phone me. He was the one I’d phoned when looking for her – he thought she HAD quit. When she got there though, she didn’t know who to ask… so she decided to carry on. Her second wind kicked in and she managed to finish 6 minutes before the cut off time. She’d also managed to lose her shoes along the way – don’t ask! – but she did it. She is so chuffed and I am so proud I could pop.

The amazing thing is this… My kid – standing on the brink of the maelstrom of teenagehood in all its hormonal glory - now knows that when she is thoroughly ready to quit, she actually still has more than half a race-worth of courage, energy and determination in her. That is something that has been carved into her for life. Another enormous slab of character foundation securely laid – never to be shifted. Wow.

Had it been up to me? I would have rescued her. Without a blink. Not a moment’s hesitation. Yet God saw fit to engineer circumstances beyond my control.  And she has grown.

Today was a valley. I could curse it and throw rocks at it, because emotionally it was hell – I won’t lie.

Yet the careful crafting of my beautiful daughter’s character by a Heavenly Father who is lovingly shaping her for His pupose?

How could I possibly throw rocks at that?

Methinks I’m going to save that photo as my desktop background as a reminder.

Watch this baby dance!

These are my baby’s feet from Sunday, painted and printed at children’s church. I call her my baby, but in truth she is 4-going-on-16, designed purely to keep me mentally agile. Wow can that little girl argue! Somewhere out there, is a lawyers cap with her name on. We have so much fun together. And yes, my energy does run out with predictable regularity – but it’s all good.

The reason I’ve popped her little feet at the top of this post though, actually has nothing to do with her, and everything to do with all of us who have it built into our DNA to write. One of my favourite lines in the Bible says something like ‘do not despise the day of small beginnings’. I’ve broadened it in my mind to ‘do not despise daily small progress’. No matter how small. Any movement forward is better than no movement at all. Any number of words added = more words than were there before. Baby steps can get you a finished novel. S’true!

Methinks I should have it tattooed on my forehead.

Just keep writing, just keep writing… what do we do? We write, WRITE, WRITE!

You do realize that just by reading this blog, you have become something like my accountability buddy? Lucky you! *fat grin* So here is my progress since my last post. Watch this baby dance… I have only 2990 words left to go on one of my pre-pudding dinner projects. If this doesn’t make any sense to you, see my previous post On Being Grown Up and Not Getting Swallowed . Once written, I have to add discussion questions – 4 for each of the 12 stories. Then there is a solid round of editing, then… drumroll… DONE.

After that, I’ll tackle ‘project #2′ and then… maybe … just maybe… my book.

I’m taking baby steps daily.

I live in hope! What are you hoping for?